Religious Viewing of Sculptural Images of Gods in the World of Late Antiquity: From Dio Chrysostom to Damaskios

Abstract

This article investigates an important aspect of traditional religiosity, the veneration of statues, as a contribution to our understanding of the relationship between opinions (often philosophical) found in non-Christian texts and the actual religious practices of communities. These presented arguments for the religious use of statues on the basis that statues off ered a symbolic presentation of divinity, served as an acceptable concession to limited human intellect, and represented something of the intelligible nature of the divine in material form. It appears that cult statues remained important until at least the fi fth century, among intellectuals as well as among the general populace. As long as shrines existed, they continued to act as contact portals. With the destruction of shrines, the pagan community turned to other, humbler forms of worship. Rising in importance during this time is the intermediary role of the holy man and the recourse to hieratic magic. Theurgic methods of invoking and compelling divine immanence relied on this long tradition of statue worship. It is here argued that the ardent commitment to cult and statues among prominent pagans was a response to the new situation after Constantine and the result of the close connection between philosophy and ritual in late Platonists through the theurgic dimension of late Neoplatonism.

Aspects of Roman Dance Culture. Religious Cults, Theatrical Entertainments, Metaphorical Appropriations

“…54 Lada-Richards 2007, esp64-78; Webb 2008, esp 197-216 55 Soler notes Libanios' claim at Or 64 50 that dancers dedicated their hair to Dionysos though this is in a series of allusions to older periods and may not be a reference to fourth-century practices Inscriptions (IAph 8 89, 97 and 98) giving lists of the Muses, found on the stage of the theatre at Aphrodisias and dated between the third and fifth centuries may also be a trace of cult practices involving performers See alsoRoueché 1993, 31-37 56 Porphyry, fr 316-318 Smith See Johnston 2008 On Porphyry's lost treatise seeMiles 2015and Deligiannakis 2015, 176-177 57 Cf Miles 2015, 87 Johnston 2008 provide an avenue through which humans, trapped in the material world, can worship entities who are immaterial "…”